


Leave the Light On

by wolfbird



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Minor Mentions of Shitty Parenting, Sibling Bonding, these two deserve to be friends and if the writers won't give me that then i'll give myself that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:27:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26270383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfbird/pseuds/wolfbird
Summary: Two moments, in childhood and in adulthood, that Five and Vanya made each other smile.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 9
Kudos: 72





	1. Childhood

Vanya knelt on the roof of the Umbrella Academy, letting the sounds of traffic roll over her as she fumbled to unclasp her violin case. Dad had told her to practice while the others were training, like he always did. She was pretty sure that he meant for her to practice in her room, tucked safely away so he wouldn’t have to spare a single second thinking about her while he was busy with more important things, but he never checked. The roof was much more interesting than her room, and besides, she liked having little secrets like this, ones that she kept to herself on purpose. Usually she just kept things to herself because no one asked.

The downside of the roof is that it was breezy, and she had to keep her knee on her music folder while she opened the violin case and applied rosin to her bow. Her hair whipped around her and she sputtered to blow it out of her mouth as she set her chin on the chinrest and dragged the bow across the strings. She cringed – the violin was flat, of course, because its was cold up here. She fumbled with the pegs and hummed the correct pitch, drawing the bow across the strings again. A little better. She wasn’t great at the violin, though she’d been practicing diligently for a little over a year now, but she could hum the tuning note just right every time.

Vanya hummed again, and this time the violin resonated the same, perfect sound. She continued to hum, allowing the sound to vibrate in her head and ribcage, matching with the sweet chord from the violin. She knew Dad wasn’t happy with her progress, but she was happy in these moments, when she could really feel the music, even something as simple a single chord.

“Do you have perfect pitch?”

She wrenched her eyes open in surprise at the voice, stood up, and stumbled backwards, blushing. She’d been sure she was alone on the roof, and she’d never practice in front of her siblings, how embarrassing –

Freed from underneath her knee, her music folder opened in the wind, sheet music fluttering everywhere. “Oh – “ she gasped, grabbing for the wheeling pages, but there was no way she could reach them in time.

But Five could. “Hey, don’t worry,” he said, effortlessly phasing to retrieve the escaping sheet music. He handed them back to her as casually as if she’d just passed them over to him for a look. “See? It’s handled.”

Vanya gathered them back to herself, still blushing furiously. How long had he been standing there? Had he _seen_ her, kneeling and playing to herself like a complete weirdo? He must have. He was sure to burst out laughing at her any second.

“Wh – What are you doing here?” she asked, somewhat defensively, hoping to preempt him. “I thought you were supposed to be training with Dad and the others. Unless –“ she looked around for the rest of her siblings, relieved to find that she and Five were alone on the roof. “It doesn’t look like you’re done early…”

Five laughed, but at what she’d said, not at her. “If Dad ever stopped training early, I’d call an ambulance. He wouldn’t stop for anything less than a death in the family.”

“Nah, I think he’d just have Mom take the corpse to another room,” Vanya quipped back, feeling the tension drain out of her just a little bit. She actually couldn’t remember the last time Five had been mean to her, or at least no meaner than he was to everyone else. Maybe he’d keep what he saw up here to himself. She was just lucky Allison hadn’t shown up – Vanya would have been the Academy laughingstock for a week.

“You’re right. Nothing could stop the old shitbag from getting in his jollies making children run up and down stairs a thousand times.” Five phased to the top of the roof railing and back again, mimicking their dad’s formal tone, “’Number Five! You will not _cheat!’_ ” He grinned, shaking his head. “Joke’s on you, Dearest Dad. I can go a lot farther than up the stairs.”

Vanya found herself smiling along with Five, then frowned again when a thought struck her. “But…won’t Dad be pretty mad that you skipped training?”

Five waved her comment off easily. “Vanya, Vanya, Vanya, in case you hadn’t noticed –“ he leaned in, whispering in an exaggerated conspiratorial fashion - “Dad is _always_ mad at us.”

She bit back her kneejerk response, ‘ _Not at me,’_ before considering if that was even true. It had been a long time since their dad had smiled at her, if he had ever. She seemed to remember, vaguely, him once telling her that she was doing a good job, that he was impressed with her, but she couldn’t put a time or place on the memory. True, he yelled at her less than he yelled at her siblings, but he also simply dealt with her less.

Meanwhile, Five had absently picked up her violin bow, which she’d dropped in her surprise. He was turning it over and over in his hands.

“Hey!” she yelped. “Careful with that! Don’t – “

“Yeah, yeah, don’t touch the hairs, I know, I know,” he replied, continuing to examine the bow. “You never answered my question.”

“Your – what?”

“My question. The one I asked you before you freaked out all over the place. Do you have perfect pitch?” He stopped fiddling with the bow and looked her square in the eyes, considering her. She definitely couldn’t remember the last time someone had done _that._

“I, um. I’ve never really considered if I do,” she fumbled, startling at being seen. “I mean I don’t think so? I’m not, well, I’m not very good at playing, so – “

Five shrugged, handing the bow back to her. She realized he was actually holding it quite carefully, despite his nonchalance. “You don’t have to be good at playing the violin to have perfect pitch. You just have to be able to recognize pitches. It’s kinda in the name.”

She took the bow and put it back in the case, accepting that she wasn’t going to get any practicing done.

“What makes you think I might?” she ventured carefully.

“The way you can just find the tuning pitch with your voice. Not everyone can do that. I mean, I tried to learn piano and I sure as shit couldn’t do it.”

“No way.” Vanya shook her head. “It’s just memory. I’ve been doing this for a year now. You gave up playing the piano after two weeks because you hate being bad at things.”

“Whatever you say, Vanya,” Five said casually, leaning over the side of the balcony to watch a vintage car sputter by below. “Not my problem that you’re so obsessed with being ordinary.”

For a split second, Vanya saw red. So now even _Five_ was getting in digs on her? Was that why he’d come up here? To make fun of her, like she’d originally thought? She swallowed her anger and it was quickly replaced with shame. “I _am_ ordinary,” she muttered, turning her back on Five and kneeling down again to put her violin away. “And I’m leaving. Enjoy the roof.”

“Hey, no,” he protested, phasing in front of her as she walked towards the stairwell door. “Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I just don’t get why it’s so hard for you to accept that you might be at least a little bit good at something.”

Vanya sighed, but she didn’t try to sidestep him. “Why are you even here, Five?”

He grinned. “To hang out with my sister, of course!”

“Nice try. You didn’t know I’d be up here.”

“No,” he admitted, “But I hoped you would be.”

That took her aback. “Why would you want to hang out with me?”

“You’re not going to like the answer,” he warned.

“Try me.”

Five locked eyes with her again, a tiny shit-eating grin hovering at the corner of his mouth. “Because you’re ordinary.”

Vanya threw up the hand that wasn’t holding her violin. “ _Oh_ my _god_ ,” she groaned, trying to get past Five to the door. “That’s it, I’m really leaving this time – “

“Vanya – “ Five grabbed her sleeve. “Vanya, wait.”

“Oh, what, so you can insult me again? I know, Five! I know you’re special! I know I’m not!”

“It’s _not_ an insult,” he insisted, still looking at her incessantly. She wished he wouldn’t do that. It hurt a lot worse to be told you’re not important by someone who was seeing you as they said it. “Being ordinary? In this place? That means _you’re_ the special one. Because you’re _different_ from the rest of them. And I like that about you.”

Vanya felt like the wind had been knocked out of her. What was Five talking about? What was so good about being different from their siblings?

Five seemed to have realized that he was making some headway, because he kept plowing onwards. “In case you haven’t noticed, Vanya, the rest of our siblings are total morons, and our dad is the worst of the bunch. They’re _obsessed_ with fighting petty crime, stopping bank robberies, being _superheroes._ And Dad plays right in to it.” He put on his Dad impression again, but this time it was a little more British matron than Reginald Hargreeves. “’Oooooh, look at my special children, they’re going to save the world some day, one apprehended mugger at a time!’” He laughed bitterly. “Yeah, right. We could stop all the street criminals in the world and it wouldn’t do one iota of good towards solving _real_ problems.”

Vanya felt a little lost. “I – what, you mean, like, global warming?”

“Yes!” Five shouted, waving his hands over his head, overexcited. “Yes, exactly! Like global warming! _Thank_ you! You can’t punch global warming, Vanya. You can’t superhero team global warming.”

“Okay, I guess you’re right. I just – “ Vanya sighed. “This sounds stupid, but what does that have to do with why you want to hang out with me?”

“Don’t you get it?”

“…No?”

“The rest of us, we’re going to be stuck like this forever!” Five exclaimed, gesturing to himself, to the Umbrella Academy patch on his jacket. “Why do you think Ben and Klaus are so depressed? They’ve realized it, even if they don’t know they have. When everyone thinks you’re a hammer, all they’re going to let you do is drive nails! We could live our whole lives being congratulated for doing nothing at all of real importance. But you – “ He looked at Vanya again, in that way that was really _looking_ at her. “You have the gift of being able to walk among _them_.” He gestured towards the sidewalk below. “All of history’s revolutionaries have been normal, as far as I know. People who went to college, or didn’t, or had families, or didn’t, but most importantly, what they did came from how they knew other people. How they interacted with other people. We’re not ever going to be able to do that normally. We’re never going to be able to make those real connections. But Vanya, you _could_. You could get out of here. You could change the world for real.”

Five’s eyes were pretty wild when he stopped, and Vanya stayed silent for a long time, considering. She was skeptical that the rest of her siblings couldn’t live normal lives, but she had to admit that she was flattered by what Five was saying. Or, at least, she thought she was. “So…you’re saying I’m cool because I could be the next Karl Marx or whatever?”

“More like Lenin, but yeah, basically.”

“But what if I’m not? What if I don’t become a revolutionary? Or change the world? What then? What if I’m really and truly just _ordinary?_ ” She felt tears biting at her eyes. Five was projecting a lot of expectation on to her, and she was sure she was going to disappoint him.

“You can try, Vanya,” he said seriously. “That’s what’s important.”

She shook her head, chuckling a little, and wiped her eyes. “Alright. Um, that’s a lot.” She looked at the door to the stairwell, then at the violin case she was holding. “Are you okay hanging out with me before I try to turn into a cool revolutionary?”

“Oh, yeah,” Five said, phasing over to the roof’s railing again. “I also think you’re funny, so that should tide me over until you start motivating people to guillotine oil executives.”

Vanya laughed a real laugh at that, then took a deep breath, trying to build up the courage to say what she wanted to say next. “So can I…um, finish practicing? You can stay and listen if you want.”

“Yeah,” Five said. “I’d like that.”

Vanya began to play. And, to her surprise and delight, Five listened without comment.


	2. Adulthood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five and Vanya finally talk. A path opens up going forward.

Vanya sat on the steps of the house that she’d shared with Sissy, the house she couldn’t help thinking of as “their house”, even now, after everything. Her breath hung in the air in front of her. The snow that shouldn’t be there was chilling her feet through her soaked shoes. Her powers had a comedown, it seemed, and she was teetering right on the edge of it. Or maybe that was the weight of the new memories of her family, who seemed to love her now but who hadn’t for so long. It had been so easy for them to get along before she remembered everything, and now she didn’t know how she felt at all. People did change, and she had no doubt her siblings had changed, but resentment felt so familiar to her. Can you love someone and be stunningly, deeply hurt by them at the same time? She wanted to talk to Sissy about this, but…

She put her head in her hands. It was all too much. Her powers, her memories, her feelings – all of it.

Someone sat down lightly on the steps next to her. She didn’t look up. “I’m not in the mood, Allison - ” she began.

“And I’m not Allison, Vanya,” said Five, that familiar snide smile evident in his tone. Vanya was surprised enough to lift her head from her hands to see Five sitting beside her, his uniform as perfect as if he’d materialized straight from a history lesson with their father. It brought up a multitude of memories, some recent and some ancient: a bloody bandage wrapped around an arm, a windy day on a rooftop, a hand outstretched in a cornfield. _I’m your brother, Vanya._ She had believed him immediately.

“How are you?” he asked nonchalantly, kicking a bit of snow off the step below them with the toe of his dress shoe. She tracked the kick with her eyes, noticing in her peripheral vision that he stole a scrutinizing glance at her while he thought she was looking away.

“I’m not about to go nuclear again, if that’s what you mean,” she replied, feeling uncharitable even towards him.

“That’s not what I meant. But I think you know that.”

“Do I?”

Five looked at her full on and she was surprised to see the tiniest bit of hurt in his eyes. “Of course you do. I’m not scared of you, Vanya. Not like – “ he stopped abruptly, realizing what he had been about to say, but the damage was done. Vanya’s stomach dropped, and she looked away.

“So they are afraid of me.” She blinked hard, willing herself not to cry. Not over this, not over something she knew already.

“That’s not -- they’re afraid that you’re going to do something you regret,” Five said gently. “They know you don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“Yeah? If they knew that, why didn’t they tell me sooner about Leonard? Why didn’t they all come and talk to me? Why did Luther lock me in that fucking – “ It was all coming back, everything from before the apocalypse, and it was as though it had been days, not a year, since it had happened. She stopped, breathing hard, not wanting her voice to rise enough to alert their other siblings. Five was still, horribly, looking at her, and she looked away. “Stop _looking_ at me like that.” He didn’t, so she looked back at him, eyes burning, wanting him to flinch. “Why didn’t _you_ come and talk to me, Five?”

To her surprise, he did look away, just for a second. She wondered if she would recognize shame on his face; she’d never seen it there before. “I did come and talk to you. Right at the beginning, I told you what had happened to me, what was coming. I trusted you with that.”

“And _nothing_ else. You climbed out my window, for god’s sake. We could have helped each other.” Vanya was hemorrhaging memories. Wind caught her sheet music and scattered it across the rooftop and someone caught it and handed it back to her and wanted to be her friend, but then he disappeared. “And you _left_. All those years ago – I told you not to fight with Dad! I tried to stop you! But you couldn’t resist, you could never resist getting the last word in, and you _left me alone with them, Five._ ”

It was silent between them now. Vanya expected Five to say something mean, something that would make her seem petty and stupid. Something like, _I spent years in the apocalypse and this is the thanks I get?_ Instead, he said nothing. He was looking ahead now, out at the snow on the grass, melting in the summer sun. After a moment, he reached into the jacket of his stupid little uniform and withdrew something from the inside pocket. Wordlessly, he held it out to her.

She didn’t know what to do but take it. It was a folded piece of tattered paper that looked as though it had been torn from a book. She unfolded it carefully – it was so worn she was afraid it would fall apart – and took a closer look, stealing confused glances at Five while she did so. It looked, to be frank, like junk. Every spare inch of the paper was scrawled with equations and notes written in ineligible shorthand, including the bits that were otherwise filled with printed text, now long buried in this handwritten miasma. One single equation was written larger than the others, underlined and circled at the top of the page.

“That’s how I got back,” Five said, startling her. “That’s where I wrote the equation I spent years figuring out.”

Maybe Five had meant to make her seem petty after all, to show her this as some kind of evidence of the lengths he’d gone to to get back to their family. The handwriting betrayed the anxiety of its author; the pen had bitten through the page in some places. The overall effect was of someone who was deeply disturbed. Vanya didn’t know what to say until something else caught her eye: one spot devoid of handwritten scrawl, where the original printed text shone through.

_I left the light on for him._

“This was the last page I had left,” Five said. “I saved it. Didn’t write over it until I really had to.”

This was a page from her book. She remembered writing chapter five, how hard it had been. How much of Five she had forgotten at the time of writing.

“When I found their bodies in the rubble years ago -- ” Five started, looking off into the middle distance. He stopped, drew in a breath, then pressed on. “When I found the bodies of _our siblings_ in what was left of the Academy, right after I jumped…you weren’t there.” He looked over at Vanya, to make sure that she understood the weight of what he was saying, then looked away again. “I didn’t know what that meant. It might not have meant anything. You could have been crushed, buried more thoroughly than the rest – but I looked. I swear to god I dug through that mess until my hands bled, and you weren’t there. So I thought…I don’t know what I thought. I should have thought that you were dead somewhere else in the city. Maybe I did think that. But I know what I hoped: that you were still alive out there, somewhere.”

Vanya opened her mouth, even though she didn’t know what to say to that at all, but Five carried on.

“So when I came back, I went to you first. Because I trusted – I trust you. I wanted to see you. But I had a whole night to think about it, the implications of my being there, of you not being at the Academy in the original apocalypse. And I thought, if I fuck this all up, what if everything goes bad _and_ Vanya dies there too?” He shook his head. “I’ve done things I’m not proud of. But getting my favorite sister killed… _that_ I could not _ever_ risk. A poor excuse for not telling you, though. For not being more open with you. I should have known you’d understand.”

“I was pretty fucked up at the time, to be honest,” Vanya replied. “I don’t know that I would have understood.”

“But I could have tried harder.”

“Yeah, you could have.”

They both looked out over the fields of snow, silent. The sun was dipping low on the horizon now, a summer sunset that was totally at odds with their quiet, frozen world. The icicles on the awning above them were beginning to melt, and Vanya could hear Diego and Allison arguing in the back yard, approaching the devastated house.

“You don’t have to forgive me,” Five said. “You don’t have to forgive any of us.”

Vanya exhaled. “But…I want to. I want to try.”

Five smiled.

The porch light above them flicked on and the door creaked open. “You guys good?” Allison asked, poking her head out at them.

“Oh, yeah,” Vanya said, and Five nodded along.

Allison smiled. “Great, then get inside before the roof totally caves in. Klaus found some cookies in the pantry, and we should eat before we figure out where to go from here.”

Vanya handed the paper back to Five, then got up. Allison looked pointedly at the paper but said nothing, holding the door open for the two of them. The porch light glowed on behind them, extending a warm, welcoming light into the snow. Inside, Klaus lounged against a half-crushed countertop, Diego scowled at his cookie before taking a tiny bite, and Luther attempted to sit on a couch that had lost most of its stuffing. This was not home, Vanya thought. But it was a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well folks, here's my feelings about Five and Vanya Hargreeves and their deep sibling bond that is hinted at but never explored in the show. Hope you felt something, because I sure do every single time I think about them!


End file.
